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How does Huckabee sleep at night?

We've sometimes heard, at least I have, that people who are uneasy about Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate must just be too enamoured of big business, too much inclined to believe anything Rush Limbaugh says, not really committed to the pro-life issues, sold out to the neocons, and so forth.

Well, not me. As a matter of fact, I was uneasy about Huckabee because, yes, it sounded like he was green, and I'm anti-green, and it sounded like he was fomenting anti-business hatred, which I think is dangerous and dumb. But he sounded to me more or less like George W. Bush 2.0. Compassionate conservatism ratcheted up a notch. And if his pro-life credentials had held up to examination, I was willing to consider voting for him under some conceivable and not entirely unforeseeable circumstances, though not with any great happiness. (We conservatives are often accused of being unwilling to compromise. Balderdash. It's the fiscal and related issues on which we do often compromise, though reluctantly, because we consider the life issues more important.)

Let's just say my stance toward Huckabee has changed.

By now everyone who reads blogs knows that Maurice Clemmons, the cop murderer recently killed in Seattle, had his sentence commuted in Arkansas by Gov. Mike Huckabee some ten years ago. If you've read up on the case further, you also know that Clemmons was exceedingly dangerous and that prosecutors were very much against Huckabee's commuting his sentence. Clemmons went on, predictably, to commit a whole string of crimes, and he was just out on bail on a charge of raping a child when he went on his most recent shooting spree.

You may also know that Huckabee has a track record of defiantly, repeatedly, and obsessively releasing dangerous criminals over the pleas of prosecutors and victims' relatives. This second article tells about one horrific murderer named Green whom Huckabee tried to release but eventually backed off on.

What you may not know is that this is also not the first time that one of these evil, dangerous criminals has gone on and killed again. Read here the story of Wayne Dumond, in whose case Huckabee persistently (and probably illegally) intervened so as to make it appear that the parole board had released him. Huckabee said that this particular rapist (yes, he had been convicted of rape) had gotten a "raw deal." After his release, Dumond went on to Missouri, where he raped and murdered two other women.

So why, after the Clemmons case, isn't Huckabee crying out, "Not again! Not again! What have I done?" But not at all. On the contrary, he is still defiant. He has shamelessly played the race card on the Clemmons case and has, once again, tried to pass the buck to other people for Clemmons's ability to roam freely and murder people. What is the matter with this man? How does he sleep at night?

And can we assume (as I rather hope we can) that he's toast now, as far as political ambitions are concerned?

If Huckabee turns out to be The Un-dead in the Republican primaries in 2012, and if some of us are less than enthused, I don't wanna hear it. There were, yes, already legitimate reasons for a conservative to have hesitations about Huckabee. But this is disgusting. And Rush didn't tell me to say so.

Comments (23)

Lydia,

I think you mean Arkansas above, not Nebraska.

I also had an issue with Huckabee concerning his spending record as Governor of Arkansas. I once saw him defend his spending record on TV (maybe even his own show) by saying his hands were tied on education spending due to some sort of court decision. If true, then we need Governor's willing to stand up to the court system and especially the education bureaucrats (including many teachers) and say ENOUGH! We won't keep throwing money at the "problem" of education for zero to little in the way of results.

I agree, good riddance to him has a viable 2012 candidate. The interesting question now is who will the candidates be? If it weren't his record on MassCare, I'd be very interested in Romney.

Huckabee is a sentimental Evangelical, pseudo-populist version of GWB. I believe that deep down in his heart he craves to be a member of our current ruling overlord elite. He certainly acts like it, cheerfully unleashing criminal underclass anarchy on us.

The fact that all the neo-cons hated Huckabee made me want to look at him more closely, thinking that there must be something good there. I found a few things but not really enough to get me excited. I like some of his ideas, but I don't think he's presidential material.

Romney's awful. An establishment GOP suit if there ever was one. Palin's the anti-Huckabee--a social populist crossed with a corporate cheerleader, blissfully unaware that corporatism is corrosive of the very social values she holds dear.

As bad as Obama is, so far there aren't any GOP names being bandied about that really interest me.

Great post Lydia. I agree wholeheartedly. Huckabees' training as a preacher has provided him with a quick tongue and he can be persuasive, but I think his acutal record as governor of Arkansas should be examined thoroughly before considering him for the Oval Office. His habit of showing mercy to the undeserving at the expense of the innocent will come back to haunt him and rightfully so.

Bobcat, you're probably right. I saw something where he was saying things like, "My critics don't know what it's like to be a governor and have all these decisions to make..." It sounds like that's the line he's taught himself so he can sleep. Mind you, I do understand that one has to be able to live with big decisions to be a major politician like a governor. One has to not flagellate oneself for every unintended consequence. But these were _so easy to foresee_. It's like he's deliberately made himself incapable of going back and rethinking. He's determined that he was right, and nothing will change his mind, and he'd do the same thing again given the chance. Even when it's obvious that he was crazily, horribly wrong.

If Huckabee turns out to be The Un-dead in the Republican primaries in 2012, and if some of us are less than enthused, I don't wanna hear it. There were, yes, already legitimate reasons for a conservative to have hesitations about Huckabee. But this is disgusting. And Rush didn't tell me to say so.

I can understand commuting a sentence if by that you mean switching the guy from the death penalty to life imprisonment (particularly if you have qualms with the dp). But just releasing the guy? Unless there was strong DNA evidence showing he was clearly innocent and the courts refused to reconsider it, I just can't see releasing.

Huckabee changed the sentence from 108 years in price to something like 58 years in prison. By doing so, he became immediately eligible for parole, which was granted by the parole board. Huckabee's action is perfectly defensible.

Um-huh. I'm sure that all Huckabee intended was to make sure he was in prison for 58 years instead of 108 years. It was that difference, in case Clemmons should live nearly into his 80's and still not be able to get out of jail then, that really stuck in Huckabee's craw. The fact that Clemmons was eligible for parole after the commutation was a _complete coincidence_. And of course it was very strange that the prosecutors were so bothered by the clemency decision, since they and Huckabee were in complete agreement that Clemmons should spend the next 58 years securely in jail. What did they have to worry about?

How you, Badger, would defend his direct lobbying of the parole board in the Dumond case, I don't know, but I guess it will be creative.

It's amazing, in an unpleasant sort of way. I didn't really expect to get anybody on here defending Huckabee.

I'm afraid that is just a reflection of the lack of seriousness many folks have taken on this topic. (I won't call it intellectual laziness, since I don't expect everyone to be familiar on the details.) Anyone without tribal baggage who examines Clemmons's record and his interaction with the government will not come away with Huckabee's clemency being the critical event in protecting society. You argue that 50 some years was critical. The State of Washington felt $150,000 was enough to secure its interests.

I'm not even sure I should add this, because the Clemmon's case is easy enough to argue on its own merits. Arguing that we should put more people in prison than the Soviets placed in the gulags is just a form of cheap grace. Arguing that the existence of recidivism is a reason for never addressing real problems in the justice system such as Clemmons's ridiculous sentence is just more evidence of an absence of seriousness. You might as well argue that abortion is good because it reduces crime. Out of 1000 clemencies, pardons, and what not, we have fewer than 10 headline cases. But hey, redemption is for losers.

Arguing that the existence of recidivism is a reason for never addressing real problems in the justice system such as Clemmons's ridiculous sentence is just more evidence of an absence of seriousness.

So now you've gone from saying that the Clemmons clemency was defensible at the time, which was dubious enough, to saying that his sentence was ridiculous, which is demonstrably false (unless children not being raped and cops not being killed is what you consider "ridiculous"). If you can't admit, even with the benefit of hindsight, that it was a mistake to grant Clemmons clemency, then you are a true ideologue.

Out of 1000 clemencies, pardons, and what not, we have fewer than 10 headline cases.

Yes, well, out of 1000 clemencies and pardons, fewer than 10 are granted to unreformed killers by gullible, sentimentalist idiots like Huckabee.

Sounds to me like the whole point of Clemmons's "ridiculous" sentence was to *keep him from being paroled*. Which makes it eminently sane and sensible. Huckabee deliberately reduced it to a parole-able level, and Clemmons was released to kill again. Sickening.

Well, guess what: I think that, depending on circumstances, armed robbery may well merit life imprisonment. Most of this other stuff merits the d.p., as far as I'm concerned. And clearly the prosecutor knew something about Clemmons and how dangerous he was, didn't he? He's expected more all this time.

I don't know if I should be glad or not that you haven't even tried to defend Huckabee on Dumond, who was a convicted rapist, or Green, who had committed a horrific murder, the harrowing details of which Huckabee couldn't even be bothered to read before he started, on the word of a fellow Baptist pastor, to try to get Green released. And there are many others. Huckabee commuted many violent criminals while governor. It was a sort of trademark for him, and it shocked people and infuriated prosecutors.

You just don't want to admit that Huckabee is a sentimentalist so irresponsible that his sentimentalism reaches the level of true, serious, inexcusable moral wrong.

He needed killing isn't a legal argument. Changing killing to 'put away for life' doesn't change that. All reports stated that Clemmons had been a model prisoner. He was sentenced for a crime he committed at sixteen. There were many breakdowns in the justice system that should have seen Clemmons behind bars but didn't. Huckabee's clemency wasn't one of them.

I don't speak to Dumond and Green, because I'm not as versed on the details. I would figure you would be less sympathetic to an argument that Christianity can be a disease that infects the brain and removes judgment.

It's a perversion of Christianity, Badger, and a bad one. If Huckabee discovered himself as a ruler bearing the sword, he'd make good and sure it _was_ in vain. He'd throw it away singing Kumbaya, and let the criminals go on committing crimes. And feel no guilt. Essentially, that's what he has done. He is a disgrace to his office and, in particular, to his duty to protect citizens from those who would harm them.

I see you don't believe in a retributive view of justice. I do. If the penalty was a just one in terms of desert, it was a just one. I don't really give a tinker's damn whether he was sixteen (or seventeen, which is the age I have heard) when he committed armed robbery. There are plenty of vicious sixteen and seventeen-year-olds around, and I only wish we had the guts to prosecute them to the full extent of the law so they couldn't go around committing worse and worse crimes.

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